The ups and downs of house sales

We had an offer on the house today. Not from the man who called me, but from another couple who had been looking at it for a while. They were told about the other man's interest, so they decided to write up an offer. What a joke! It was ridiculously low and we almost just said no, but our agent said she'd cut her commission, and we counter offered with our bottom line price. They also want inspections. I can understand that, and if you want to for your own purposes then fine, but the realtor told them flat out that the house is as is...we will not give any money back for repairs whatsoever. If they want money for things, they will have to bump up their price. We'll hear back on that tomorrow.
Right after that call, I heard from the man who called earlier. He was asking another question and said he was going to call our realtor to make an offer...and a better one than the couple, that's for sure. I already know what he wants to offer and we'll take it. Of course, he'd have to sell his house first, but I am personally pulling for this guy. He appreciates the positives of the house and the work that still needs to be done doesn't phase him. Gotta like that in a buyer! Me? I just want it overwith.

Jack Frost nipping at your nose

Wow, is it cold outside! I purposely didn't check the weather before I took Bailey on her walk this morning. Just knowing it was going to be really cold was enough. I bundled her up and we did a 40 minute trek down our usual path. Brrrrrrrr. Then I had to take the car in to the shop and walk home from there. Another 20 minute walk and by the end of that one my fingers were getting numb. I finally checked the weather now that I'm warm again only to find it is 17* but feels like 4*. See? That's why I don't let myself check these things before going out. It helped me to believe that it was somewhere in the upper '20's. It also helped that I kept running "Walking on Sunshine" through my head as I walked. Who says lying to yourself is a bad thing?

We are hoping for an offer on our house today. Not the guy who called, but another interested party who decided to put in their offer after our realtor mentioned to them that another offer was in the works. Competition is a healthy thing. I just hope it's a reasonable offer and we can put this whole house selling mess behind us. I am not holding my breath, though. I learned that one the hard way.

Bills and calls

I just paid the bills today. I should be happy to have the money to pay the bills. Plus, thanks to our income tax return, I have the money set aside to pay our rent here until the end of May when we would move back home. Still, it makes me depressed to pay bills. Just seeing the money flowing out, I guess, makes me blue. It would be nice to go crazy with it. I wonder if I will ever get to a point where I can just go a little crazy with money. Somehow I doubt it.

I was playing a board game with the girls a little while ago when the phone rang. It was a family member of a family member asking questions about the house we have for sale up north. I don't know him, but I have heard of him and he knows my dad. He made me an offer on the house that's only about $2,000 shy of our bottom line gotta-have-it amount, so I told him to call John tomorrow and they could wheel and deal. It was just so out of the blue and he obviously hasn't even gone to a realtor, but I'm OK with that! I just want to ditch that place and walk away. It's filled with far too many memories of work and stress and if there's a glimmer of hope that I am going to get to escape that place, it's enough to drag me through another week! I don't want to get my hopes up, though, so we'll see what happens. As usual.

John is away at a teaching seminar. He called last night and said he was a little bored so far, but I think he'll survive. At least he gets to bond with two other teachers who carpooled with him. I told him it sounded like a buddy's hunting retreat without the booze or the hunting. That's what I need....a retreat! Someday....

Gloom, despair and agony on me....

Ahhhh, Hee Haw. Now that was a show. I used to think they wrote that song just for me!

I've been avoiding my blog. Hiding out anywhere on the web but here. I hate writing when I have nothing positive to write about, so I've been meandering through scrap sites, news sites, shopping sites, even People Magazine online in hopes of not coming here to write. But here I am because eventually I'll get that "Why haven't you updated your blog" question.





No news is bad news on the house. I know it's being shown, but there are no offers. There was hope of one last week, but I guess they decided to buy something else. It has been well over six months and I have given up hope. I hadn't before, but now the entire thing has dragged on so long there is no end in sight.



The weather has really taken its toll on my mood. The ice storms that swept through here left us without power off and on for days. The worst was the coldest night of the year and our power went off around 5 p.m. It didn't come back on until about 9 a.m....we tried to get a hotel room, but the people fleeing Springfield had filled every room in town and the weather was far too bad to try to drive outside the city. That was our second outage but it wasn't our last. I was so frustrated with a lack of backup heat. At least at our house we have a woodburning furace and a woodburning fireplace to keep us warm. This is the worst storm damage they've had in decades here, but it sure doesn't leave me with a good taste in my mouth about the town. I can't stand cold weather and I dread ice storms like that one. It leaves you feeling so helpless. We did make the best of the situation by wrapping in blankets and playing games by flashlight. The girls even played a handheld game for a while by flashlight. And yes, of course I took pictures. The creepiest part of the whole storm was listening to the trees splintering. I know we heard limbs fall every five minutes or so for days on end. The dog was freaked out by it the first night and wouldn't stop barking, but the second night she totally ignored it.


Another problem with the storms is it kept school out for over a week. Now they've lost spring break to make up for it and still will have to make up two additional days on top of that.

My grandma took a severe turn for the worse today. She had cancer surgery on the third and has been hospitalized since. She was making great progress and was out of the ICU, then something happened. She now has pneumonia with a high fever and they aren't sure she is going to make it. I think that's the roughest part of today, just hearing that she might end her life in a cold, sterile hospital and I can't get up to see her anytime soon.

That's enough cheerfulness for one night.

Pack Your Knives and Go

I don't know why I've become a Bravo TV junkie. It all started with Project Runway and the gaping hole that show left in my life had to be filled with something, so I allowed Top Chef to slide into its place. I'm not sure why I'm into either one of them, really. To say I scoff at high fashion would be an understatement, yet I sit glued to the TV each season Project Runway comes on. I love to see the weird fashions they create, most of which no sane woman would want clothing her figure. When the network announced Top Chef as a replacement I laughed "Why would I watch a show about someone else cooking food? It's not like I can judge the food for myself!" yet here I sit, week after week, unable to break free of my addiction. Maybe it's the personality clashes I love so much, because it certainly isn't the food. I couldn't tell you what they cook. I can't smell it. I certainly can't taste it, and from the looks of about 90% of the things they create, I am glad I can't. Yep, must be the fighting. As if I don't hear enough of that in my household anytime the two children occupy the same room for more than 15 minutes (and God forbid one of them should have sole control of the remote). Maybe it's just more fun to watch others fight.

I've been cranking out altered tins in a feeble attempt to sell them and I'm sick of looking at them. I have an avenue through a friend to sell them at a booth she owns, so I am curious to see if anyone would actually buy one. I guess so since she already did and another friend of mine wants to "commission" me to make two tins for her as gifts in a few months, probably after I move back to the Icky house, as Shona calls it. *sigh* I'm not even going there. I've been too down about it lately and I'm trying not to even think about it.

There's bad weather heading our way this weekend. Rain, snow, ice....I'm just glad we are too broke to go anywhere!

That's it from this corner of the world at almost 1 a.m. on a Thursday morning in Anita's humdrum, mundane life. Such as it is. More of the sameness that is my world tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Blog Challenge

My blog challenge for the day is to answer these questions, so here goes. Keep in mind it's 9:00 a.m., I've had 4 hours of sleep tops, and I have had no caffeine.

1. I've come to realize that my life is what I make of it.
2. I am listening to construction work next door.
3. I talk very little.
4. I love the END of winter, my kids, Pensacola, my husband, some days my dog, rain, walks, quiet time, scrapping....
5. My best friends are distant.
6. Love is all it boils down to, really
7. Somewhere, someone is thinking "why the hell is it Monday morning again?" Oh, that would be me.
8. I'll always want something more.
9. The last time I cried was because....I don't even remember the last time I cried, to be honest. Maybe when Shona was born. Most things aren't worth shedding tears over and I'm a seemingly rather stoic person.
10. My cell phone is an annoyance but makes me feel safer.
11. Before I go to bed I've usually spent half the night scrapping or online.
12. Right now I am thinking about how sore my legs are after walking the dog
13. Today I am volunteering at my daughter's school
14. Tonight I will scrap as much as possible
15. Tomorrow I will be going back to bed after putting the kids on the bus!

Look here!

Look at me, blogging three days in a row. What's the deal? Maybe I just have too much time on my hands and I've finished my February assignments way too early. I guess that leaves March. I should get cracking. But not yet. I'm watching Top Chef, having a delicious cup of International Foods French Vanilla coffee and plunking on the couch for an hour. Maybe after that I'll scrap. Maybe not. Maybe I'll post a sneak peek. Maybe not. Muahahahahahaha....

Scrapping

I have been a scrapping machine lately. I think it's because I couldn't for so long during December, plus I got some really adorable pictures of the girls in Santa hats. In any case, I have managed to crank more work out in this last week than I have in the past two months. It feels good. I intend to keep on this roll for as long as possible. Maybe I'll get my Christmas pictures completely scrapped, then I can finish the ones from 2005!

This is my favorite layout of the week so far. I used a Becky Fleck sketch and it just all fell into place.

In bad news, I put a perfectly healthy, bouncy six year old on the bus this morning and one hour later I walked into the nurse's office to retrieve a pale, slumped sickie of a kid. Poor thing threw up on the bus all the way to school. She never ran a fever, but she spent all morning on the couch in the dark and quiet (except for hearing mommy clacking at the keyboard and scrapping), didn't eat much and then suddenly was as well as first thing this morning. Kids! So quick to become ill and then they are over it in a snap. The worst part is it was the first day back from Christmas break. Well, worst for me, not for her. She's already trying to wheedle her way into staying home tomorrow. I don't think so, kiddo. Mommy is ready for some quiet time!

Catching Up

OK, OK, so I've been a bad blogger. Life just gets in the way during the holidays and this year was no different. It was a little strange living so far away from home yet being within driving distance for Christmas. We went up twice, once for the big family shindig and again a few days later for Christmas at dad's. I won't do that again. Poor Shona wasn't feeling well and was miserable half the day. Plus, my brother and sister in law were out of town and my sister and her husband had something going on at their house, so we were there with my stepsiblings, none of whom I particularly care for. We only stayed for about 90 minutes. So four hours of driving round trip to spend 90 minutes being bored and not talking much. Next year, if we are still living here, that won't happen.

As for still living here...the contract on the house fell through. We were really ticked, but I guess these things happen. I've pretty much given up hope on the house selling at this point, and it would have to happen very soon (as in the next three months) to keep us here. I know John is pretty upset at having to give up the teaching job he likes so much, but we can't afford to keep paying the mortgage and the rent. It's breaking us. It especially hurts that I can't find a job in this town and at this point I've given up looking. Even if I found something, we can't keep up those payments any longer than we have to. Poor Katy loves going to this school. On the plus side, though, I've decided whatever happens happens and I'm starting on plans to go back to school when we do return. I'm going to start applying for scholarships and grants and I will be applying at one of the universities fairly soon. I'm a bit nervous going back to school after all these years, but I suffered through enough dead end jobs while John was in school, it's his turn to put me through college.

I'm looking forward to 2007. Big changes are in the air no matter where we turn and for once I look forward to them. Bring it on!